The Buzz Behind the Chocolate: Local Honey, Local Magic

At Mocha, we believe the best chocolates begin with the best ingredients and that means keeping things local, seasonal and full of flavour. That’s why we’re buzzing with excitement to introduce a new collaboration with Melsonby beekeeper Steve Pace, whose golden honey will soon be sweetening some of our handmade chocolate creations.

Steve’s beehives are located just down the road from our chocolate making facility on the Aske country estate and his bees forage on the crops, wildflowers, hedgerows and blossom of the surrounding countryside, producing beautifully nuanced honey that’s as natural as it gets. Over the coming months Steve will be keeping us updated from the hives with seasonal blog posts tracking the honey’s journey from flower to jar.

Our first blog! The girls are doing well, having excelled themselves in the spring, producing lots of oil-seed rape honey.

This stuff sets solid in a matter of days, so it's important to harvest it as soon as it's ready. Unlike runny honey made later in the season, the bees themselves can't make any use of this early crop in the winter, so I don't feel too bad about taking it all. (It takes a lot of effort to rehydrate it and get it warm enough to go runny enough to eat).

Once the weather cools in Autumn and I can get the honey-room down to 14 degrees, I can churn and turn it into soft-set honey which we'll sell in Mocha in the Richmond shop and at Aske (within sight of the apiary!).

Now, after the June gap between the OSR and the summer flowering crop, they're back at it, foraging hard, even in this heat. 

It's important to make sure the hives are near a good source of water, as the flights they take to bring it in to the hive are "wasted" journeys and, given their short lives as foragers, they need to be bringing in food rather than water, to store for their winter (and for our honey for the chocolate). 

Next blog: ensuring a colony of bees for the Spring